


Key Signatures

by fixomnia



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M, Post-Transition Hawaii Trip!, Post-episode 7x13 "The Cold"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-01 06:49:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12151008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fixomnia/pseuds/fixomnia
Summary: Donna and Josh muddle through the failedauto-da-cléfin the hotel bar. And beyond.Continuing a stream of transfers of works from my beloved old LiveJournal.





	1. Key Signatures

The overstuffed easy-chair was the most comfortable seat she’d had in weeks, but it still reminded her of her usual window position on the Santos plane.

After fifteen minutes of sitting in the unfamiliar quiet, staring at windy tree limbs and scudding October clouds from the fifth floor of the Capitol Grand, Donna decided that it was time for shower and bed. Wherever Josh Lyman was, he wasn’t knocking on her door, and there were too many unknowns to sift through to make further figuring worthwhile.

Most likely, Josh had simply been taken aback that she’d made an unambiguous gesture in public. Slightly overdrawn, true, but nothing else was getting through. And Edie was just being helpful as ever, assuming she was saving Donna a trip back downstairs after forgetting her key on the table. But she’d seen his face, and knew the message was received.

So why didn’t he call?

She surged to her feet, impatient, and glared at her cellphone as she walked past the anonymously white standard-issue desk into the anonymously white standard-issue bathroom.

She unzipped her toilet bag with a hard tug and began rummaging. Chamomile shower gel was made for nights like these.

Maybe she should give him the benefit of the doubt. Days on the campaign trail were long, brutal, and mentally and physically crushing, in any time zone, and she could hardly fault him for not wanting anything more complex on his plate. She knew it would take time, but how much? And what on earth did he want, really? 

She doubted he was even aware of the mixed messages he sent her every day. _I miss you like crazy. I’m still mad as hell at you. I’m in over my head, help me. You’re the only one I trust. You left me. I’m seriously impressed. I’m seriously turned on. We can’t do this. I want you and to hell with everything else. Busy now, sorry._ Political messages he could whittle and spin to a fine point in his sleep. Personal, not to say romantic messages, were a foreign language for him, occasionally emerging broken and sputtered in abject need. 

Maybe it was enough that they’d both been semaphoring like mad that they were just overjoyed to be close together again, seeing each other every day, having each other to depend on. And truly, one hot unscheduled kiss ( _Oh, God. It’s you. It’s you_.) tragically interrupted, wasn’t much grounds for an invitation to come up and see her sometime. 

About a dozen unnecessary, carefully concealed little touches and glacier-melting looks between them, since then, made her believe differently. Despite everything. 

Maybe he was consulting counsel right now, she thought, smiling grimly into the bathroom mirror as she dragged a comb through her hair. Forming a contingency plan and fixing plausible deniability on the matter of all outstanding and future sexual overtures by one Donnatella Moss of Madison, WI. Establishing proof that she had, in fact, pounced on Mr. Lyman while he was still disoriented and half asleep, and had responded to his congratulatory, collegial embrace in an untoward fashion. 

She was combing out hair by the bucketload, something that hadn’t happened since she left Wisconsin and Roy the second and final time. At least she wasn’t having crying jags. When this was all over, she should call Marcie again and set up some appointments; meanwhile she should pick up some more B12 and try to remember to do her long deep breathing in the shower and on the bus. 

If she was experiencing symptoms of chronic stress, she couldn’t begin to think how Josh was faring. His trousers hung too loosely, and he scrubbed at his eyes when he thought nobody was looking – both side effects of the Venlafaxin, which was a relief, but he probably wasn’t taking any further care of himself beyond a pill with his first coffee of the morning. 

So far, his yelling had stayed within acceptable limits for the army captain of a dark-horse Presidential campaign. Maybe she should remind him about his breathing exercises, though. 

She’d wanted to simplify things for them, and provide, at least, a foundation for them to pull each other through the campaign and beyond. Not through sex, necessarily, but if they were headed that way anyway, even with all the forgiving and talking that still needed to happen, why couldn’t they agree to figure it out together instead of apart? 

Why, why, why? It wasn’t that easy and she knew it. She had been precipitate and Josh was probably going to stay up all night working on Santos’ Defense Spending plan because of it. 

Who was the bigger idiot tonight?

She had to keep her head completely in the game. AP and Reuters, even the BBC and Canadian Press were calling 2006 the closest US election in decades, and she could count the dependable states on one hand. She was doing well, developing her role as Spokesperson as the need grew, but she wanted to be more proactive. She and Lou should test-film some segments on the occupation of China and Kazakhstan in advance of next weeks’ conferences and scrums, if the rumors of increased action were true. 

CJ wouldn’t tell her anything that wasn’t already in the news, though she occasionally phoned her with her illicit critiques of her work now and then, generally reminding her that the press trusted her, and that couldn’t be taught. She needed to capitalize on that. Make sure to seem warmer and less careful. The face of the future, of hope. Unlike Vinick’s polite, coiffured, pearl-toting spokesdroid. 

Donna sighed, watched a handful of fuzzy blonde combings drift from her hand into the toilet, and began undressing.

She was tangled in her pantyhose when Josh chose that moment to phone. Nobody else called when she was stuck in her underwear, or standing on a chair changing a light bulb, or had just sunk up to her neck in the bath, or fallen asleep. Nobody but Josh.

“Hey.” She hobbled over to her phone, tried to sound casual, and winced.

“Hi. It’s Josh.”

“Yes. Josh. Hi.” Tug. Rip. _Shit_.

“You – ah, you left…Edie was too quick, she thought you'd just forgotten your, your key, and I was just…I tried to…”

Oh. Either the evening had just gotten rosier, or Josh was a nervous wreck.

“Josh, are you stuttering?”

“I am, yes, a bit. But I’m – I’m okay.”

She got it. There was a pause.

Donna sat on the edge of her neatly-made, empty, large, cold bed and smiled. She was tempted to ask if their relationship was about to change, but stopped herself. If he was tripping over his words in his attempt to be clear, if he wasn’t filtering his responses through frat-boy backchat while the other 99% of his brain clicked away on key messages and tracking polls, this might just work out.

“Was it too much?” she asked softly. “Tell me, Josh.”

“No! No, I was…I am…I’m flattered, just a bit shocked, but not really, and I’m…making a total hash out of this. Can I start again?”

“You want to come over?” she asked automatically, just as she’d done a hundred, a thousand times before, from her apartment, from hotel rooms all over the country. _Come over and let’s scheme, let’s plan, let’s talk till the sun comes up_. Only, this time there was a key involved, an offer laid down. She bit her lip.

“Donna, it’s not that I don’t want to. God, I want to. You gotta know that’s not it.”

She slumped. “Okay.”

“It’s just all so crazy now, and we’re so close, and it’s – you’re too important, Donna. Believe me, I’m amazed I’m not right outside –”

“You’re not? Why aren’t you?” she managed. He deserved something for that.

He chuckled sleepily down the phone and her ear got warm and tingly. “’Cause I’m in bed,” he replied, answering several of her unspoken questions with a smile in his voice. “Because it occurred to me maybe it was a good thing Edie was too quick, because I wouldn’t have had time to think. Donna, you just threw me for a loop for a second. I know it would have been…but our timing’s been way off for the past, I don’t know, _year_. We just got back to being us again, sort of, and then I was an idiot after…this morning, and I really, really– ” he swallowed.

 _I can’t lose you again, either,_ she thought back at him. And wasn’t that, in all honesty, what had propelled her to make the jump herself?

“Yeah, my timing probably wasn’t the best, either,” she admitted.

He gave a short laugh. “I’m just saying let’s not _not_ get into this now, okay?” he asked, sounding so like her old Joshua that her throat tightened. “Just a little while. Can we do that? My head's in a million places. You don’t have a job lined up somewhere far away as soon as the campaign’s over?”

“Josh, as soon as the campaign is over, and I mean _as soon as_ the campaign is over…”

“You know what? How about we both just sleep on that.”

“Okay,” she grinned. “I’m pretty used to that by now.”

“You’re slaying me here, you know that.”

There was a moment when she could have whispered, “ _Joshua, come over_.” and he would have. He wouldn't wait for the elevator and he'd be walking through her door within two minutes.

“Goodnight, Joshua,” she said.

“Goodnight, Donnatella.”


	2. Finding the Keys

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Josh narrowly avoids a nutty upon being slipped a hotel key by his favourite blonde.

If only he could keep pretending she still worked for him.

He smiled and shook hands and promised thirty-second phone briefs; he mock-saluted a couple of colleagues as they gestured their goodnights, and he didn’t hear a thing.

Edie came back to his table and looked anxiously into his face, and asked him something. He replied reassuringly, and she went away mollified, but with a sudden flicker in her eyes that he usually received from CJ when she was not impressed with him.

Donna wanted him to come to her room, and Edie had almost certainly clued into her role in their little ten-second theatrical farce this evening.

This had to stop. He’d kissed her just this morning, and she’d kissed him back, and suddenly, making sense of the Central Asian deployment and its impact on the current Presidential election had become his second priority.

He couldn’t let that happen, even for a minute or two as he wound down at the end of the day, and so he had to shelve it. Shelve her. Them. Again. His phone could ring at any second with an urgent call from the White House, from Toby, from anyone, summoning him for a post-sit-room debriefing or to ask his candidate’s position on military engagement. It had happened earlier and would happen again.

If only he could keep pretending she still worked for him.

He could go on enjoying his sporadic Donna-fantasy-life when a suitable moment appeared, confident that she was behind Pyramus’ wall as far as propriety was concerned, satisfying himself with glimpses and hints. He could even convince himself that he was acting nobly, making sure her reputation remained unspotted, because there was always plenty of speculation where his supposedly underqualified but undoubtedly hot assistant was concerned.

And seriously, he had to stop thinking of her as his assistant, or even his protégée, his secret legislative weapon. Nine times out of ten, Donna turned to Lou for her marching orders anyway, knowing that Josh shouldn’t be concerned with the minutiae of her media appearances.

It was just so easy to feel her there beside him, her unquestioning support and uncanny timing, and fall into their White House roles again. It was a wrench to realize just how completely he’d taken for granted everything about her, especially when senior Party officials and Senators and Congresspeople kept remarking on her capabilities and diplomacy, and asking where he found her.

_“It was totally inappropriate…I feel terrible.”_

Oh, shit.

He’d fallen into his own web of denial, treating her as if she might leave him again in righteous fury, or…pushing her away so that she would? Punishing her for leaving at all, in the way that his hyperactive ego grabbed any opportunity to drive a point home, even years after the fact?

It seemed that, as in the old days, she’d read through his words and his double-talk and decided to ignore them and trust that his sanity would return someday. But there was a difference now. While she’d put her game face on immediately, and tossed his words back to him, she hadn’t bantered along with him. She simply cut through years of bullshit and called him on it, left him openmouthed, and seemed quite ready to jump straight into his outstretched arms a short while later, before he’d redirected his exuberant outburst.

The fact also remained that she’d kissed him back, undeniably so. And tried to slip him her room key.

 _“This must be what your first smack high feels like,_ ”he’d breathed into the phone to CJ, watching Donna talking with Bram and Ronna, glorious in the autumn sunshine, completely on top of her game, part of the dream that was so much greater than all of them put together.

She was right. She’d been keeping him on task their whole working relationship, and wasn’t above shaming him when necessary. He had to keep his head in the game. This was the voice of backwards adolescence, in the middle of the most important job of his life.

_Now that’s telling…was any job more important than pulling through open-heart surgery? And flying to Germany on a half-hour’s notice when we almost lost her, for real?_

_I can’t offer her anything if this is where my head needs to be. I can’t let myself. But when does it ever end? Maybe she’s right. Maybe we just have to take our chances where we find them, and try to sort it out on the fly._

_Yeah, right. I’d implode with that kind of earthquake shift on top of the campaign. I know I’m still fucked up. Even though work is my real drug, not the meds. No way should she sign up to take on all of that. But she knows that. She knows better than anyone. And still she…_

Who was the crazier one tonight?

If _only_ he could keep pretending she still worked for him.

He made his way to the elevators, still shaking hands and slapping shoulders. He watched a couple of tipsy junior campaign staffers leave the bar arm in arm, and suddenly turn separate and serious when they saw him waiting.

He nodded absently, uncaring, and waved them onto the elevator ahead of him. “G’night,” they mumbled in unison at the fourth floor, and moved off skittishly, the girl’s giggles reaching him from down the hall as the doors closed again. He smiled a little bitterly to himself and wished them luck, wondering when he’d become Old Man Lyman.

Why the hell hadn’t he just grabbed the key, given her a few minutes’ headstart, and followed her? Maybe headed out into the lawn terrace at the back and swiped a few flowers…they looked nice.

He raised his hand to press the fifth-floor button, and watched as the elevator cruised on up to the seventh floor. He pulled his cellphone out of his coat pocket as he stepped off, punched in her number, and stopped the call before sending it.

Good God. He was acting out a textbook avoidance reaction, all alone, with technology as a prop.

Yeah, out of whatever little war he had going on in his head, between wanting to give all of himself to Donna and to Santos, and his own messed-up stuff, only one path was well-lit enough to take. He had to step back, find some way to truly convince her that he wasn’t hesitating because of her, but because of them, and maybe – just maybe – ask her to wait till he could process what it all meant, and see whether the next few years would be spent in the crucible of the White House or working for DC3.

Entering his room, he tossed the phone on the nightstand and flopped on the bed. The room was nicely warm, and the bed surprisingly comfortable. He toed off his shoes and let them fall. That was even better. It was only eleven-thirty. An early night. If he got a few hours of decent sleep he could be up by four, and somewhat rested.

He needed to be alone, too. He should do his breathing exercises. All the sitting in planes, buses and boardrooms was wreaking havoc on the tough scar-tissue in his chest, which still tightened up as soon as he stopped stretching, making his breath come shallow and his blood pressure soar. Not to mention the inhuman stress levels of his daily life.

He shucked off the layers of travel-worn clothing, down to his boxers in case someone came barging in, and sat on the carpeted floor with his back against the side of the bed. _One…two…_ stretching up and out, twisting from side to side with each inhale. He’d forgotten he had a body at all, living entirely inside his head for days at a time. _One…two_. Second exercise, five minutes. Even the twinges felt good.

Everything seemed to slow down, stop spinning madly by him as he moved through the set. Feeling virtuous and sleepy, he crawled under the blankets, and reached for his phone again. He could do this now.

“Hey,” she said, sounding more ordinary than he’d expected.

“Hi. It’s Josh.”

“Yes. Josh. Hi.” _Ah. I’m not out of the doghouse yet. Which is actually a relief…she was always too quick to forgive me my screw-ups. Most of the time._

“You – ah, you left…Edie was too quick, she thought you'd just forgotten your, your key, and I was just…I tried to…”

“Josh, are you stuttering?”

“I am, yes, a bit. But I’m – I’m okay.” Oh, this was oratory at its best. _This is your best friend, he reminded himself. Why should you fear anything she might say? Who else knows how to read you better than you know yourself?_ Only, that made it worse, because it all mattered so damn much.

“Was it too much? Tell me, Josh.”

“No! No, I was…I am…I’m flattered, just a bit shocked, but not really, and I’m…making a total hash out of this. Can I start again?”

Somehow admitting that seemed to be the magic key, this time, because as soon as he took a deep breath, he started to feel less cloudy. Even about asking her to wait. Stanley would be thrilled. He’d congratulate Josh on recognizing when he needed to ask for greater emotional security, and he’d probably mention that he’d enjoy meeting Donna at some opportune time, as he sometimes did.

“You want to come over?” Donna asked. Stanley disappeared, and for a second, it was as if a massive reprieve had been offered to him. How easy, how incredibly easy it would be…he thought back to all the nights when that brief invitation had led to the most profound, silly, trying, painfully bittersweet and exciting conversations of his life. How often he’d thought to himself, _I just want to talk with you like this every day of my life_.

“Donna, it’s not that I don’t want to. God, I want to. You gotta know that’s not it.”

“Okay.”

He heard the wariness in her voice, and frantically tried to figure out how to make it right. “It’s just all so crazy now, and we’re so close, and it’s – you’re too important, Donna. Believe me, I’m amazed I’m not right outside.”

“You’re not? Why aren’t you?” The pout registered over the phone. And that was it, that was them again, and it sent a wave of weak relief through his limbs. It was going to be okay. Somehow.

“’Cause I’m in bed,” he said, and gave her a sly moment to consider the visual, because she knew damn well he slept in the buff unless there was some reason not to, and to realize that he was actually resting before midnight. “Because it occurred to me maybe it was a good thing Edie was too quick, because I wouldn’t have had time to think. Donna, you just threw me for a loop for a second. I know it would have been…but our timing’s been way off for the past, I don’t know, year. We just got back to being us again, and then I was an idiot after…this morning, and I really, really– ” he swallowed.

_I can’t lose you again._

And wasn’t that the ridiculous and very real fear at the heart of everything – the fear that made him stop her from getting too close, even as he withered a little every day without her?

“Yeah, my timing probably wasn’t the best, either,” she sighed.

He gave a short laugh. “I’m just saying let’s not _not_ get into this now, okay?” he asked impulsively, “Just a little while. Can we do that? You don’t have a job lined up somewhere far away as soon as the campaign’s over?”

“Josh, as soon as the campaign is over, and I mean as soon as the campaign is over…”

“You know what? How about we both just sleep on that.”

“Okay,” she replied, her voice dropping an octave, “I’m pretty used to that by now.”

 _Oh, sweet Jesus, that’s going to keep me awake nights_. “You’re slaying me here, you know that.”

There was a moment when he knew he could have whispered, “ _Donna_ ,” and she would have said, “ _Come over_.”

“Goodnight, Joshua,” she said.

“Goodnight, Donnatella.”


	3. Counterpoint Fugue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Um. The campaign is officially over and nobody is sleeping. At least not alone.
> 
> (I actually forgot this existed until tonight. Time to set it free after all these years...)

“You might have had an easier year of it if you’d… _come on board_ ,” Ronna pointed out.

She slinked past him on her way to the bar. He watched her kiss Cindy hello, or goodnight, or come-hither or whatever it was, and stared a moment longer, feeling an unexpected pang for the affection between them as they left the lounge. Also intrigue. Sweet little Ronna could pull out some stops.

“Wow. Cindy.”

Donna’s complete stillness caught his attention. She was watching him. Actually, she was blinking languorously at him and taking a deep breath.

“Did you know that?” he blathered.

“About Ronna and Cindy?”

“Any of ‘em.”

Donna was amused “Yes.” She sipped her drink.

“Which ones?”

“All of them.”

_Ah. The Sisterhood. Which might also explain why we were just left all alone within thirty seconds._

He watched her brush imaginary crumbs from her skirt, and cast his mind back to other late-night drinks with Donna, but couldn’t remember her ever looking like this. The coltish girl of years past had morphed into a graceful conversation-stopper. Which had the effect, among others, of making him mortally afraid of doing or saying something fatal.

He had no idea where to begin sifting, let alone communicating, the morass of feeling and memory surrounding her. In forty-three years of achieving the spectacularly smart or spectacularly stupid, kissing Donna Moss definitely ranked as one of the smartest things he had done, even if they’d needed to be shocked out of their wheel-rut to get there. The future was the proverbial abyss that no man could look into.

Did she want to jump into that abyss with him? Did she really know what she’d be taking on if she did? And what did he want, besides Donna firmly in his life, somehow, every day they both had left?

She felt him watching her and looked up, locking gazes with him. She appeared to be quietly smoldering to herself.

_Well. Somebody’s entering her prime years_.

He shifted in his chair. “Did you ever…come on board?”

She smiled, he thought, almost sadly. “No.” she said softly.

“Never had a campaign fling?”

She gave him a long look. _Oh, shit, no, that’s not what I…._ “No.”

But then she was walking towards him, trailing her sweater in her fingers and letting it drop near him on the couch. She sat down beside him, pushed back a strand of hair as she crossed her pretty legs at the knee, making sure he got an eyeful as her tailored skirt rode up a sweet half inch, and sat there burning up inside her clothes.

_Ah. Okay._

He breathed in her familiar scent. The way she smelled in the early morning, clean and light, was nothing to the late-night spiciness of her, after a long day of working beside him, arguing with him, laughing with him, challenging him.

“You want another drink?”

She eyed him once more and shook her head. “ _No_ ,” she said.

She stood up and catwalked towards the elevator, knowing that he, along with more than half the bar’s late-night denizens, watched her every step. Josh felt a moment of panic as the distance grew.

_Is this incredibly stupid?_

_Is this campaign stress?_

_Here goes everything._

He stood up, tossed back the last of his drink, and followed her to the lobby.

Catching up to her at the bank of elevators, he reached out to grasp her fingers while pretending to study the elevator panel, and heaved a sigh of relief as she squeezed back. _Yeah, real smooth, Lyman._

She grinned lopsidedly, as if he’d managed to be endearing despite himself, and pulled him into the elevator.

There was supposed to be a serious conversation. It had to happen, and soon. But the doors clicked behind him, and she looked up and pulled in a labored breath. She reached out to slide her hand over his shirtfront. He felt her fingertips as if they touched his bare skin, and an electric frisson radiated through him. He covered her hand with his and met her mouth halfway, propelling them both against the elevator wall. God _, yes_. Her silky mouth opened to his tongue, and everything went needy and messy, a little rough. His hands slid down over her hips and he tried not to groan. Unsuccessfully. _Oh, God._

It was Donna, as usual, who steered them away from disaster. “Hang on, hang on, almost there,” she murmured breathlessly.

He dropped his forehead into the curve of her throat, thinking that now he would always know the taste of excited, mortally exhausted, turned-on Donna, and praying Ariana Huffington or the Chicago Tribune weren’t waiting to spring on the seventh floor.

All clear. He poked his head out to make sure, and they made for his room with exactly six inches between them and as much casual haste as they could muster, given the Secret Service guards posted two doors apart all the way down the hall. She’d acquired the spare key card to his room, which surprised him not at all, and passed it through the scanner with cool fingers.

Then they were inside his room, the world locked out, actually up against the door - _God, Donna, Donna_ \- as she made reckless love to his tongue, her fingers dug into his ass. And then he just jammed himself against her and she growled down his throat and it all went wild and they weren’t going to stop. Not with his hands pulling her blouse out from her skirt to slide underneath. Not while she kicked off her heels and walked him backwards to his own rumpled bed.

He hauled her blouse over her head, half undone, and suddenly her warm, impossibly soft skin was right there under his hands, her eloquent pale shoulder under his mouth, his teeth. She hissed in pleasure and slid her hand down to find him hard and aching, and if this wasn’t going to be a dizzying half-dressed fuck he was going to have to –

Well, on second thought...

His feet hit the bed and he sat down before he fell over. He crumpled her good cashmere skirt up around her hips, his mouth tasting the curve of her side, and slid his hands over her tight bottom. He helped her pull off her pantyhose and underwear. She crawled up onto the bed with him, and suddenly he was touching her, musky and slick, and _ohgod_ , his fingers slipped easily along her pussy, sliding just between her lips. Her busy hand stroked over his fly and began working the button and zipper, sliding under layers and closing around his hard length, and pulling him out. He bit his lip hard and tugged her hand away, rolling her under him, sucking at her nipples through the lace of her brassiere. 

She took him in hand and guided him all the way in, oh, _fuck_ _yes_ , and then he was thrusting swift and deep in time with her and _God_ , she was swollen tight and so wet, the hot smooth skin of her thighs around his hips driving him out of his head. She hitched her legs over his back and cursed when he found the perfect angle that caught her clit and that sweet spot deep inside, again and again, her harsh shout as she came hard, her nails in his ass, her spine arched back, and _oh, god oh god_ _Donna_ , when his climax hit it was like nothing in the world, nothing in the world.

After a moment he opened his eyes, closed his mouth, and disengaged as gently as he could. He rolled over, and Donna burrowed into his chest and sighed shakily. It sounded like a blissed-out sigh, so he made bold to tug her hip nearer so he could reach her skirt zipper, and helped her out of her bra. He quickly finished shedding his boxers, which had somehow hung onto one ankle, and his socks, which made him cringe, and dropped the lot beside the bed.

As lovely as it would have been to spend some quality time counting the galaxy of freckles over the tops of her soft white breasts with his lips, reality wasted no time in intruding.

_Can this possibly mean to her what it means to me? Was this eight years of frustration and lust and campaign battle hormones, or is this…it? For real?_

He swallowed, pulling Donna closer, and shivered pleasantly as he felt her fingertips slowly search out and trace over the nailprints she’d left on his back. He looked her in the eyes properly. She flashed her fabulous old smile – _Oh, thank God_ – and lifted a hand towards his face. He kissed her fingers, laced his own through them, and tried to smile back.

And how was it that she could look soigné and composed, even flushed in post-coital reverie, while he was still stunned and gaping? Wasn’t this just typical of the whole…them? _Yeah, this was the part of my take-me-now fantasy I never got around to planning. Donna would’ve had spare clothes somewhere handy in hers._

“Wow…” he shook his head as if to clear it, managed a wry grin, and let go of her hand. Switching off the lamp on the nightstand, he joined her under the quilt.

He wrapped his arms around her, and she burrowed against his side. Skin to skin at last.

He knew she could hear his heartbeat, and the thought jarred him more deeply than he expected. He meant to say something in just a moment, but he fell asleep to the feeling of her hand rhythmically stroking the furze of his chest, over the shiny pink scar.

* * * * *

He awoke in the dark, to the sound of her soft breathing and her warmth beside him. His heart thudded. _Oh, man. What happens now?_

3:03 am. Plenty of time…

_Let her sleep while she can._

He rolled over, and she was right there, just an arm’s reach away, pale and ephemeral in the dim light that filtered in from the window. He thought about waking her with his hands and mouth, slowly this time, building her up to a sweet dazzling ache…

… _I just wanted to tell you, that I’m overwhelmed, that I’m so grateful that we both survived, and that I’ve come to believe, on some level, that this is why – we’re the why – and there might not be another chance to tell you for a long time…_

_Ah, fuck, it’s too soon. Don’t do that to her. Not until you figure out what this all means, for good. And how to begin talking to her about it, because this is it, man, and if you blow it, it’s over. And she deserves more than I can possibly give her._

_The timing couldn’t be worse._

_I just need some time to figure out how to do this. And without losing all this middle-of-the-night clarity, like I always do..._

_I have to tell her, now. Don’t worry about the words. She’ll understand._

Then his fingers grazed her hair, and he flinched. The words disappeared in a welter of confused self-contradictions, like he knew they would.

He rolled over and sighed in giddy exhaustion, release, and the unfairness of it all.

The bed creaked, and he heard Donna shift. He’d wanted her to wake up, but her rapid awakening and flight into the bathroom was not what he had in mind.

_Oh fuck. Go. Now. It doesn’t matter what you say._

“Hi,” he said, “How are you feeling?” and mentally kicked himself in the ass.

* * * * *

And the next time, nine hours later, they barely made it to the edge of the bed, the afternoon sun streaking across her splayed knee, his moving back stretched over her, her bare toes curled hard into the counterpane.

And the next, while they recovered, cuddled under the bedclothes this time, wide-eyed, finally hit by the reality of what they were up to. Hands no longer grabbing and grasping but exploring, testing out theories and past imaginings, giggling like teenagers. He didn’t think he could possibly maintain a decent erection again so soon, not after that, but as ever, she knew his capabilities and refused to let him live up to anything less, and there they were.

* * * * *

The wall of heat that hit them as they walked out of Honolulu Airport was thicker and steamier than they had expected, even with warnings from Sam and Joey, who had both been before. He couldn't imagine why he'd thought keeping his undershirt on under his button-down was somehow a smart and civilized thing to do. He began to understand why tourists immediately jumped on the racks of loose linen Aloha shirts sold at exorbitant prices in the airport retail corridor.

"Go on," Donna told him. "There's a reason they're the uniform around here."

"You'll have to help me," he told her. "There's no way I could ever sort out a tasteful Aloha shirt from a tacky one."

"There are degrees of tacky," she admitted. "C'mon, Magnum. Let's get you localized."

They entered one of the shops that appeared to cater for a more upmarket tourist trade. Josh liked the look of the white canvas hats with snap brims, and it appeared that Donna did, too. Matching hats. Who would ever have believed he'd find that adorable?

"And then the hotel?"

"It's just a short cab ride away. We're on the sea-facing side, twenty-fourth floor."

"Twenty-four, huh?" he murmured, as they clinked through racks of shirts. "That oughta be long enough, don't you think?"

And Donna grinned and kissed him.


End file.
